Ministers to account for officials’ state business?

PARLIAMENT is considering holding ministers accountable for the failure of departments to take action against officials still found doing business with the state.

This comes after Public Service Minister Ayanda Dlodlo called for her colleagues to be held accountable as departments fail to provide progress on disciplinary action against culprits.

“At some point this portfolio committee needs to take the bull by the horns. At some point you need to call ministers to come and account before this committee on some of the issues we try to finalise from a disciplinary perspective,” Dlodlo said.

“I’m not a super minister. Sometimes it is difficult to get co-operation (and) this committee must not be afraid to call people to come and account,” she said.

Dlodlo was appearing before the public service and administration portfolio committee. Her department was making a presentation on public servants still doing business with the state despite being barred from doing so.

The department is battling to obtain progress reports on disciplinary action taken by departments against the affected officials. It is pushing National Treasury to provide full details of officials on the central supplier database.

National Treasury has offered to provide detailed information next month. Director-general Richard Levin said 580 officials were doing business with the state. “If you look at data from 2017/18 we see an increase of 99. It shows that most of them were already registered on the central database. That’s why we ask National Treasury to deregister all employees registered on the central supplier database,” Levin said.

Reporting by departments was very poor, he said. “We need to intervene.”

Levin said National Treasury unilaterally provided departments with Persal numbers of employees when the department sought their details.

He said they have requested legal opinion from the state law adviser and have written to National Treasury to allow them access to the information to verify public servants registered on the supplier database and their companies doing business with the state.

They would also request National Treasury to remove public service officials from the supplier database.

The DA’s Sejamotopo Motau said the matter has been going on for a long time and public servants didn’t think it was wrong to do business with the state. “It seems they are aware departments won’t do anything about it.”

In her attempt to rope Parliament into holding ministers to account, Dlodlo offered to provide letters sent to departments. Committee chairperson Joe Maswanganyi said there must be serious consequences for public servants doing business with the state. “We preach to people who deliberately go all out to ignore the rules.”

Maswanganyi said culprits have to be identified and ministers must be asked about action taken against them.